Can So Many Authors Be Earning Big Money?

On my way home from the Romance Writers of America National Conference in San Antonio, Texas, I met a fellow writer in the airport. She was so dazzled by the success stories spotlighted at the conference, the growing number of indie and hybrid romance authors who reported earning substantial and even impressive income from their writing by taking advantage of self-publishing. After attending workshops with titles like “How to Make Six Figures Quietly as an Indie Author,” she was ready to jump in with both feet and try her luck. She planned to quit her day job to focus on her writing, even though she had not yet completed a manuscript. My stomach sank as I considered her prospects and the incredible risk she was taking based on the undeniable success of several select authors. Had she been given false hope, or were her chances as good as the hype suggested?

The news is full of exciting stories about bestselling indie authors, and romance certainly has the largest share of indie stars, many of them like Bella Andre and Barbara Freethy, who count among the first and biggest indie successes. Yet, surveys in the US and England both suggest that these successes are relatively rare and that few authors are making a living, let alone a lot of money from their books.

Some indie advocates contend that the survey samples have simply missed the flood of people earning cash from the indie gold rush. Unfortunately, there is no comprehensive data source on the publishing industry that captures sales or revenue or even that illuminates how big the population of authors truly is. The data that do exist are proprietary and cover different pockets of the market, for example, sales by particular publishers or retailers. As a result, we don’t know how the majority of indie authors are faring in this market. Moreover, even knowing how much a publishing house is making might not translate into information on how much money individual authors receive. Perhaps the case is more optimistic than I suspect. However, there’s strong reason to believe that there aren’t as many indie—or even traditionally published—authors earning substantial income as we might hope. Let’s consider a few additional sources of data.

According to Bowker’s Books in Print, a catalog of all books with ISBN numbers that were published for sale in North America, the number of books published every year has grown exponentially in the last decade. (Note that not all self-published books use ISBN numbers, and so these number might underestimate the number of books available.) Not having to go through a publishing gatekeeper has opened the door for many authors who would have previously been barred from entering the market, but these indie authors are not the only contributors to the flood of books. While reprint publishers have been the biggest contributors by introducing hundreds of thousands of recycled works to the market, traditional publishers have also contributed as many, if not more, books than indie authors.

It might go without saying, although the point has been lost in much of the “Author Wars” conversation, that in order for all of these books to turn a profit for authors or publishers, consumers actually have to buy them. The royalty split between authors, publishers, and retailers is moot if there is no sale to split.

So who is buying all of these books that are supposedly paying the bills and replacing the day jobs of the new authorpreneurs? Has there been a surge in spending by consumers, their money supplying the gold for this gold rush? Or perhaps, given the lower prices of ebooks particularly those by indie authors, there’s been an increase in the number of books consumers are buying and reading, such that there’s a spreading of the possibly increasing wealth to include a greater number of authors? There’s no evidence of either trend.

Source: Consumer Expenditure Survey, US Bureau of Labor Statistics

In the Consumer Expenditure Survey, the US Bureau of Labor Statistics tracks the amount of money American households spend on various items, including reading. Under their definition, expenditures for reading include magazines and newspapers as well as books. The average amount spent per household was $145 in 2012. The trend in expenditures has remained relatively flat, fluctuating within the same $32 range since 2005, well before the digital explosion.

Other data provide a similar set of findings. The Pew Research Internet Project, which used a nationally representative sample of American adults, reported that in 2013 the median number of books read, but not necessarily purchased, in a year was 5. The mean was 12 per year. The project also reported that neither number was significantly different from previous years.

Consider the findings from yet another source. Since January 2009, before the digital and indie boom, the PubTrack Consumer Survey conducted by Bowker and now Nielsen has been asking panels of American bookbuyers about the books they have purchased in the last month. My analysis of those surveys suggest that the median number of books purchased by each respondent in their adult sample in 2013 was 2 a month, with a mean of 5 per month. Like the Pew Research Internet Project results, this pattern also has not changed significantly compared to previous years.

Together these data suggest there has not been a substantial change in the number of books Americans buy or read or in the amount they are spending. At one extreme, if demand were spread out evenly across the population of books, each book would at best sell a few copies. At the other extreme, a few books would be blockbuster best sellers that would capture most purchases, contributing to high earnings for those lucky authors.

While the number of books available grows every day, there is no evidence that demand for books is increasing at a similar pace, let alone in a way that would support the writing careers of the multitude of authors, or even a majority of them, even if e-books and indie publishing increase the share of sales that individual authors receive.

Authors and publishers face an oversupplied market and a steady level of reader interest and spending. Currently, it would seem there’s not enough money to feed everyone. If the pie is really only so big, then the key question going forward is, who gets a seat at the table, and how big is her spoon?

Comments

Price will be a factor. Most ebooks are significantly cheaper than most print books, meaning readers can get more bang for their buck. It’s entirely probably many readers are stockpiling lots of cheap ebooks simply because they are so much more affordable.

Many surveys suggest those e-reading read more, which again seems very probable. Only the most dedicated reader will lug around a heavy tome all day, on the off chance they have an unexpected break. When you have an entire library in your hands that can be carried around during day to day business it’s easy to snatch ten minutes here or fifteen minutes there and make big inroads into a novel, and then start the next one seconds after finishing the first.

So entirely plausible book sales and therefore author earnings are rising.

To what extent indies are grabbing a share of that market is a more contentious debate.

Most of the top-selling indies are hybrid authors and reaping big benefits from their current or past print titles, and most indie top sellers – especially the Amazon cheerleaders – are also getting the red carpet treatment from the retailers.

These authors are also the most likely to be accepted time and time again by the big US promo sites like Bookbub that thrive on affiliate fees,

And again, sites like Bookbub encourage ebook stock-piling, as the reader knows the special offer is for a limited time. Buy now, read much later.

It will be interesting to see how contrivances such as Kindle Unlimited, with its restriction to Select titles for most indies, will impact on future reports about how much indies supposedly earn.

I can really only speak on the romance community, but I do think readers who eread are buying a lot more books for exactly the reasons you state. Prices are cheaper and impulse buying is much easier. Every day, readers are bombarded with emails from the retailers and subscription lists like BookBub. Many of those readers are reading more, but there’s also a lot of stock piling going on.

My stomach hurts, though, to think of someone who hasn’t even finished a manuscript quitting their day job to join the gold rush. If you look at those of us who have succeeded big, there are some common denominators. One in particular: Content. We either had a backlist that we were able to put out in fast succession (that would be me), or we’re really fast writers who can put out a front list in really fast succession (that would not be me). To start with no content and think you’re going to land on the fast track to success is unrealistic — unless you’re a super fast writer who can churn out a well-written book every two to three months.

Even for a seasoned pro with some serious writing chops, that’s a grueling pace.

I would strongly advice anyone who wants to join the party to get at least three connected books under your belt before taking the leap. And please, I beg everyone, don’t skimp on the publishing process. Hire a freelance editor, or have beta readers who are truly qualified. Another writer or avid reader isn’t necessarily a qualified beta reader. When I wrote for NY publishers, I had critique partners who were also published authors, but that didn’t take the place of a good editor. Have your manuscript copy edited by a professional. Your next-door neighbor who’s a librarian and good at catching typos is not the same thing as a professional copy editor. Hire a professional cover designer. One of the biggest keys to success is a great cover.

Yes, there is a lot of money to be made in indie publishing, and I wouldn’t go back to traditional publishing if you held a gun to my head, but to be successful, you have to be professional.

Extreme sample of one makes for an emotional anecdote, nothing more. There will always be some who throw caution and reason aside despite the readily available realistic cautions, whether it be for trad or indie/self pub.

My takeaway is that more writers get to sit at the table… and fewer non-writers. And that writers opting to go indie/self pub are at least as realistic as those opting to go trad.

Hugh’s take is always entertaining, buyt as badlky skewed as the industry nalysis he is so quick to condemn.

Asserting that self-publishers take away seven times more than trad published authors may appeal to his audience, but ignores the fact that Amazon pays just 35% much of the time.

Hugh behoves us to understand that we don’t have a choice about getting published by Random House and all those other nasty trad publishers, but last time we looked none of the Amazon imprints had an open door either.

And perhaps Hugh can tell us all which Amazon imprint is offering 70% royalties.

The odds of success at any endeavor are long. Most people fail to do most things. Did you know that less than half the people who say they want to be doctors when they arrive at a four year college actually go on to get their MD?

Life is hard. Failure is common.

The most common source of failure is giving up. Maybe you gave up because it is hard; because you found something you love more; because you got married, or had kids; because the market shifted; because you lost hope; because you were lazy. Lots of reasons, some good, some bad, all valid.

Writers are not going to make a fortune from their first book. It is so rare that it almost never happens. That’s WHY IT IS NEWS when it does! That’s why people talk about it!

Because it is rare.

What is COMMON, however, is this: Writers who work hard, every day, writing new words. They work another job and still find time to fit in 1000 words a day, every day, 365,000 new words a year, every year. And after a couple million words, if they have not given up, they get good enough that people like their work.

If they KEEP going, at that point, and survive all the pitfalls in the industry that regularly kill careers, then they might be able to quit that day job, write 3-6 thousand words a day, every day, and build an actual career from their labors.

DO NOT expect that writing is easier than any other job. You’re still going to spend a lot of hours a week working. You have to work even when you don’t want to. It’s a job. If you can’t self motivate to work when you don’t want to, you will fail.

It’s NOT about earning millions from your work. The median US household income is about $52,000. As a writer, selling novels for $2.99 and making two bucks a book, you need to sell 26,000 books a year, a little over 2000 a month. The fiction industry is about $7 billion a year in the USA alone, so to make the US median income you need to sell about $78,000 in books, or about 0.001% of the US fiction market.

So yeah, only 100,000 fiction writers can make that kind of money. Realistically, it is probably less, as some writers make a lot more, and some make a lot less – the point is, there is room for many, MANY tens of thousands of novelists to make the median US income from their work.

And that’s just the US market. and just fiction.

Mostly, the biggest barrier for success is simply work. The desire to do it, the willingness to commit to it. Nothing else matters more.